A MALAYSIAN high court has overturned the verdict of an inquest into the death of Nóra Quoirin, a French-Irish teenager who died mysteriously while on holiday with her family back in 2019.
It ruled that it was unlikely Nóra simply wandered off into the jungle, where her naked body was found following a 10-day search.
The teenager disappeared from the Dusun eco-resort in southern Malaysia on August 4, 2019, just a day after her family arrived.
After scouring the surrounding jungle extensively for a week-and-a-half, search teams eventually found Nóra's body out in the open on a palm oil estate, less than 3km from the resort where she had been staying.
Following an inquest, the coroner ruled out homicide, insisting that the most likely explanation is that she got lost after leaving the resort by herself and starved to death.
Police say they found no evidence of foul play - despite the curious circumstances in which her body was found - but Nóra's parents challenged the ruling, demanding an open verdict be given to the case.
They've always stressed that it wasn't in their daughter's nature to simply wander off, and have consistently insisted that she must have been kidnapped - a suggestion the coroner had previously described as "nothing more than probably theory" with no evidence.
But this week, High Court judge Azizul Azmi agreed that it would not have been probable for the 15-year-old to venture out on her own, navigate the steep terrain, and evade detection for days, due to her mental and physical disabilities.
He ruled that "the verdict of misadventure ought to be vacated in the interest of justice and substituted with an open verdict."
